A
new dramatisation of one of London's most enduring legends - the 'myth'
of the barber who slit the throats of his customers - written by Joshua
St Johnston and starring Ray Winstone as Todd. Johnston's take is that
Todd's actions are attributable to childhood trauma (his mother died young,
his father abandoned him to the horrors of Newgate prison), much like
modern-day serial killers. Winstone is excellent, giving a restrained
performance but conveying Todd's inner turmoil perfectly, while Essie
Davies is equally good as the pie-making love of his life Ms Lovett. However,
if the mere sight of someone being shaved makes you sequamish (like this
reviewr) then approach with extreme caution.

Ray
Winstone gave the latter craft more than its due in Sweeney Todd.
This was a genuine oddity of a play and brave by any standards. How do
you depict a psychopath with a heart of gold, a man whose twisted understanding
of right and wrong merely exposed eighteenth-century London as a vast
sewer, but who also supplied the city with some excellent pies?

Winstone
did two things. First he took the old rule that says screen-acting must
be underplayed to its absolute limits. His demon barber was so reticent
he was almost inarticulate. Winstone's Todd was a man of grunts and half-finished
sentences, a gentle soul who could hardly bear the world's injustices.

That,
however, was the second achievement of the actor and Joshua St Johnston's
script: monsters are human, too, in whatever form they happen to take.
What turned this Todd into a serial killer? Twenty years in the hell-hole
of Newgate gaol after being unjustly imprisoned while a mere child? The
cruel death of his mother? The callousness of his father?

This
was a huge performance by Winstone. What was the reason for his actions,
demanded magistrate Fielding. "Because I could. And then, I couldn't
not." Bleak and true.

On
a metaphorically lighter note, the Beeb's concerted bid to out-vile any
offerings from other channels meant one had to watch Sweeney Todd from
behind scrunched-up eyes, which in turn meant it was easy to miss the
fine central performances from Ray Winstone and Essie Davis as the demon
barber and his charming lady-love.

Eventually,
however, I found myself sucked-in: beyond all the gore and the gurglings,
writer Joshua St Johnston and director David Moore had somehow struck
a throbbing vein of icky sweetness - a sticky sweetmeatiness, if you will
- deep inside Todd's heart of darkness.

And
while I'm not sure many actors would have been able to locate it, Winstone
succeeded. Indeed, in the pantheon of barber-surgeons-cum-serial-throat-slashing
cannibals, our Ray was as empathetically lovable as they come, and even
while plagued with the pox, Essie Davis's beauty was luminously Pfeifferesque.
A triumphant sort of Todd, then, while also being, visually and aurally,
quite unspeakably horrible and perverse on every conceivable level, though
thankfully free of musical numbers. Anyway, it was pretty timely because
'unspeakably horrible' already appears to be a TV trend of 2006.

Alison Graham's
review in The Radio Times:

Two
throat-slashings, a dismembering, the removal of a bullet without anaesthetic,
an illegal abortion and an amputation. No, it's not some weird change
of direction for Richard 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' Curtis, merely
the contents of the first half-hour of this extraordinarily gruesome drama.

The
always watchable Ray Winstone is Sweeney Todd, a tormented and unhappy
barber who channels his sadness into slashing the throats of his customers
before chopping them up and sending the bits to the bakery next door to
be made into pies. He's helped by the owner of said pie shop, the comely
Mrs Lovett (Essie Davis) who, along with her remarkably cantilevered bosom,
holds Sweeney Todd in her thrall.

It's
all very atmostpheric, and you can almost smell stinky 18th-century London.
And there are moments of black humour. But blimey, you'll need a strong
stomach.

Ray
Winstone is to star as Sweeney Todd, the most notorious barber who ever
practised his trade, in an original screenplay by Joshua St Johnston.

Set
in 18th century London, it is a dark and enthralling tale of love, obsession,
murder, and ultimately redemption.

Commissioned
by Peter Fincham, Controller BBC ONE, and Jane Tranter, Controller Drama
Commissioning, it will be shown later this year.

Actress
Essie Davis (A Streetcar Named Desire, Girl With A Pearl Earring)
will co-star as Mrs Lovett, a young lady who isn't too choosy about her
men or the source of meat for her pie shop.

Indeed,
once Mrs Lovett is installed in a shop next to Sweeney's thriving Fleet
Street business, the pair forge a complex and destructive partnership,
and customers begin to disappear with alarming regularity.

The
film boasts a cast that includes: Tom Hardy (Band of Brothers, Black
Hawk Down, Star Trek: The Nemesis) as Matthew Payne, an upstanding
Bow Street Runner, who owes his life to Sweeney; David Warner (The
League Of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, Hornblower: Retribution) plays Sir
John Fielding, author, politician and founder of the Bow Street Runners;
and David Bradley (Blackpool, Filch in Harry Potter And The Prisoner
Of Azkaban) plays Sweeney Todd's malicious father.

Sweeney
Todd is set in the harsh streets of London in 1765 where life is not for
the faint-hearted and only the fittest will survive.

Living
in the shadow of Newgate Prison, Sweeney Todd tries to carve out a quiet
and simple life, until his past comes back to haunt him and he is unable
to quell his inner demons.

When
body parts are found in the Fleet River, Sir John Fielding orders his
Bow Street Runners to investigate; but even with the threat of capture
surrounding him, Sweeney Todd is unable to run away from the monster inside.

Indeed,
his murderous spree only intensifies, threatening the lives of all those
around him.

Producer
Gub Neal says: "Ray Winstone playing the 'Demon Barber of Fleet Street'
is a performance not to be missed!

"Joshua's
script breaks new ground and elevates a myth that has been etched in the
popular imagination into a tragic love story  a striking allegory
about love, sex and death set in the 18th century."

Jane
Tranter, Controller Drama Commissioning, says: "In this boldly original
reworking of a classic story, Sweeney Todd is a man struggling to escape
his own destiny.

"This
is a gripping, authored and ambitious story which adds another, exciting
and dangerous, flavour to the mix of drama on BBC ONE this year."

Sweeney
Todd is a BOX TV and Size 9 co-production for BBC ONE and will shoot at
Romania's leading studio production centre, MediaPro Pictures, situated
outside of Bucharest. Sweeney Todd starts filming on August 29 2005.

The
film is written by Joshua St Johnston and marks his television-writing
debut.